a surprise ending

An absolutely thrilling basketball game tonight to finish off the evening's festivities.  The middle school teams are at home this weekend; both the boys' and girls' teams played.  Last game of the night, the boys played Scammon Bay.  As the teams were warming up, I was thinking it looked like our middle school team was playing a high school team; nearly all of their players were dramatically taller than nearly all of our players.  Plus, they had a generous supply of substitutes; their team was probably a dozen strong, while Mountain fielded a total of six.  And of course those six had already played one game, in which they blew a huge lead and ended up losing because they were just plain spent.  All signs pointed to a crushing defeat.

The game started.  Scammon did not, as I had expected, leap immediately to a commanding lead.  To my amazement, Mountain pulled slightly ahead early on.  But I was still expecting things to blow up at any moment, and the blowout to begin.  It didn't, and it didn't, and it didn't.  I'm not sure either team ever led by more than four or five points.  Every possession was hard fought, every point hard won.  The Strivers were hurtling themselves around the court like madmen, and I kept thinking They can't possibly keep this up!  Incredibly, they did.  With just one sub to give an occasional short breather to one or another player, our kids were pushing themselves beyond themselves.  I found out afterward that at least one or two of our players were using their brief breaks to rush off to the bathroom and vomit, then returning and playing just as hard as ever.  They were amazing.

With eight seconds left, the score was tied, and Scammon had possession.  Mountain's headless chicken defense ruffled them enough that the inbound pass went awry, glanced off the hand of the recipient and out of bounds--Strivers ball.  Seven seconds on the clock.  Inbound the ball into a mass of scrambling madness that seems to use far too much time, they're dribbling down to the corner, the defense is closing in, there can't possibly be enough time to get a shot off, and somehow the Strivers slip a pass back out of the corner, and then...

And yes, the crowd went seriously wild.  Have I mentioned that these folks love basketball?

It was my enormous good fortune, at the very moment that shot went down, to glance over at the coach.  Leaping to his feet, arms hurtling skyward, face bursting open in wild disbelief, his entire body was an explosion of overwhelming, unadulterated, ecstatic joy.  He was like the Platonic form of the concept:  Victory.